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After December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the War Relocation Authority (WRA), which selected ten sites in which to imprison more than 110,000 Japanese Americans, over half of whom were American citizens. Two of these camps where in the Arkansas Delta, one at Rohwer in Desha County, and the other at Jerome in sections of Chicot and Drew counties. These camps were open from October, 1942, to November, 1945, with over 16,000 Japanese-Americans having been incarcerated during that period. The Rohwer Center Cemetery in Desha County, Arkansas, is one of only three Japanese relocation center cemeteries still maintained in the United States. The Nisei GI Memorial commemorates the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the 100th Infantry Battalion. These units were made up of Japanese Americans and draftees from Hawaii. Over 800 men from these two units were killed or missing in action by the end of the war.

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